La sécularisation en Irlande

Une sécularisation problématique

Loyalism and secularisation

Texte intégral

1Abstract : This chapter studies the instability of loyalist ideology and its aptitude for change. It traces the place occupied by secular loyalism within loyalism in general. A number of hypotheses are advanced to explain why religious loyalism progressively supplanted secular loyalism and replaced the changes that it seemed to announce.

1 For discussions of loyalist ideology and the relations of secular and religious within it see Stev (...)

3Loyalism is centred on an Ulster Protestant identity1. I argue that the relation between the secular and the religious in loyalist ideology is in constant dynamic tension ; secular loyalism at once rejects, echoes and is finally drawn back to a religious content unless it breaks with its own axioms.

4In what follows I first sketch the place of loyalism within unionism and secular loyalism within loyalism. Next I look more systematically at the structure of secular loyalist ideology, showing a potential for change inherent within it. Finally I suggest why the more radical potentials for change within secular loyalism have only recently been taken up and only by a small proportion of loyalists.

5Loyalism, centred on a sense of identity with the Ulster Protestant community, is not the only tradition within unionism. Some unionists focus on membership of the modern British world or citizenship of the British state as central to their political identity and values. Typically, such identifications with Britain are seen as more liberal and more progressive than identifications with the Ulster Protestant community. Loyalism, in contrast, has typically been taken as the most backward-looking of all the unionist perspectives with its ritual marches and Reformation-based hatred of Roman Catholicism. Its most prominent spokespersons, in particular Ian Paisley, aid this representation by their views on popery, politics and the end of the world. Yet secular loyalists also exist in large numbers. The very existence of this group casts doubts on the portrayal of loyalism as essentially superstitious and anachronistic.

6Loyalist ideology, moreover, is important to unionism in general. It provides one of the historically most comprehensive perspectives on the Northern Protestant world, opening out to a view of the 17th century plantation which other unionist ideologies prefer to elide2. Moreover, the loyalist belief system – centred on the ethnic group of Northern Protestants – exists as a potential cultural background for many unionists who explicitly reject extreme religious loyalism but who find themselves forced back on an Ulster Protestant identity in moments of crisis. A. T. Q. Stewart saw precisely this effect following the Anglo-Irish agreement3. He described how the Agreement thrust Protestants back into their past. The troubles had deprived them of their government and their parliament : the Agreement deprived them of their homeland, or at least any say in how it was to be governed. Unionist reaction, on Stewart’s analysis, was not intransigence but “a kind of patriotism”, “the emotion of an entire religious community”. In effect, the bases for either pride in British achievements or identification with the British state seemed to have been destroyed, and many Protestants were thrust back to a form of loyalist consciousness.

7Loyalism, then, is a more paradoxical phenomenon than it initially appears. It at once encompasses the most extreme religious views and provides some background level of identity for liberals and atheists alike. Its wider appeal, however, is limited precisely by the dominance of religious views within it. The wider Protestant population’s attitude to loyalism is often one of ambivalence : at once distaste at religious extremism and some level of (perhaps reluctant) identification with some of its themes. Secular loyalism is, therefore, a particularly interesting phenomenon, both in its attempts to broaden the appeal of loyalism and in its failure to break politically with religious loyalism.

8Religious loyalism is the politically dominant form of loyalism. The traditional loyalist organisations – the Orange Order and the Apprentice Boys of Derry – are explicitly politico-religious organisations. In the main loyalist political party – the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) – religious loyalists predominate at leadership level4. There are also a multitude of smaller religious-loyalist organisations, whose membership overlaps with the larger.

7 Anthony Buckley, “Biblical Texts in the Regalia of an Ulster Secret Society”.

8 Steve Bruce, op. cit., chapter 8.

9 Martin Smith, Stand Fast, Belfast, Orange Publications, 1974.

10 Steve Bruce, op. cit., chapter 8.

9The precise details of loyalist ideology vary from group to group5. Different biblical analogies are used by the Royal Black Preceptory, the British Israelites and the Orange Order to show the meaning of Ulster Protestant history from plantation to partition6. Protestants are described as a chosen people led into a promised land, where they are beset by enemies and strangers7, their enemies are the forces of Satan, led by the Anti-Christ, the Pope8, while the Protestant people, strengthened by covenant with God, endure suffering and attack rather like Daniel in the lion’s den9, and hope for salvation in the second coming soon to be accomplished10.

10Different historical episodes are central for different groups : the Apprentice Boys of Derry focus on the siege of Derry in 1689, while the Orangemen ritually celebrate the battle of the Boyne in July 169011. In short, as Buckley notes, a wide range of biblical and historical models and analogies are available for religious loyalists12.

11Relatively few Protestants, however, share this religious belief system. On one recent assessment, only a quarter of church-going Protestants are fundamentalist evangelicals13 ; less than half of Protestants are regular weekly church-goers, and a steadily increasing 15 % no longer attend church at all14.

15 Precise proportions cannot be given on the available data ; but cf. Steve Bruce, op. cit., p. 263- (...)

12Within this secularising population, many hold loyalist political views15. Up to a third of unionists vote Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) at local elections and more vote for Ian Paisley at European elections. Among politically active loyalists, an important cluster are secular and leftist : trade unionists or from Labour party families who

13The main loyalist paramilitary organisations are secular17 and so too the new political representatives of those organisations, the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) and the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP). There are many secular supporters of the main loyalist political party, the DUP, who support Paisley as a strong defender of Protestant rights, not on grounds of his theology.

14On the institutional level, however, secular loyalism is weak. Its only parties are the PUP and the UDP and they take only a tiny proportion of the vote. Moreover, secular loyalists have often come from religious backgrounds, and remain linked to religious organisations and practices via kin networks18. The churches remain important social organisers of the community and thereby retain an influence in the definitions of community interests and aims, community solidarity and community projects19.

15In this context, secularisation is double-edged. The secular defence of the Protestant community and its identity involves a defence of the religious organisations and traditions so central to that community. Secular attempts to incorporate the insights, meaning and power of religious symbols into the logic of political action at the same time tend to incorporate politics within the organisational sphere and logic of religion, giving power to religious leaders and reinforcing the religious aspect of communal identity.

16In part for these reasons, close parallels exist between secular and religious loyalist ideology. Secular loyalists feel at home in the DUP and can identify with the meanings, although not the language, of Paisley’s anti-Romish rhetoric and Protestant assertion. They share historical narratives (the massacres of 1641, the siege of Deny, the battle of the Boyne), a moral prioritising of the Protestant community, common enemies (republicans and Catholicism) and a emphasis on similar virtues – endurance in the face of suffering. Their felt need to avoid political “contamination” (by for example contact with Sinn Fein councillors in council meetings) is akin to fundamentalists’notion of “sin as stain”, while their political willingness to take the extreme position despite condemnation from all established authorities parallels the religious emphasis on “separation” from the “ungodly”.

17In light of these parallels, it is tempting to see secular loyalism simply as a residue of essentially religious thinking and practice, in some sense parasitic upon religious loyalism. Steve Bruce, for example, argues that the fundamentalist-evangelical religious identity put forward by Paisley provides a strong Protestant identity for loyalists, the only alternative to an upper-middle class Britishness; by virtue of their ethnic Protestantism, loyalists are dependent on a religious ideology20.

18I think there are problems with this view. To take secular loyalism simply as a residue of religious is to refuse to take seriously what secular loyalists say – to deny any autonomous rationale to their perspective. Moreover, Bruce underestimates the variety of stable forms of Protestant identity – religious, political and cultural21. The Protestant community defines itself and distinguishes itself from the Catholic on a range of overlapping and interlocking criteria, not in terms of one essential characteristic22.

19Secular loyalism is not simply a residue, or even a rejection, of religion ; it is an attempt to appropriate the human and political truth of religion, to retrieve the insights and values of religious loyalism within a secular framework. It is therefore to be expected that secular loyalism share a structure of ideology with religious loyalism, and that the themes and aims of each have a strong affinity. Each sees the other as fighting basically the same fight, although giving a different interpretation and different language to it. What requires explanation is why religious loyalism retains such influence: why, despite the increasing secularisation among Protestants, has secular loyalism been so slow to develop either political autonomy from or political leadership over religious loyalism?

20Secular loyalist ideology has many variants. Here I outline a skeletal narrative which I take to be common to all the forms of loyalism. Its categories are secular : religion gives the label to the historically distinctive Protestant community, but religious belief is irrelevant to the structure of the story.

21Individuals’ relations to this story vary : some dwell upon and elaborate its themes, others take them as unquestioned common sense, others accept them with a degree of scepticism. In its variety of expressions, from loyalist songs to ritual practices to political speeches, the loyalist narrative exists as a cultural resource in terms of which Northern Protestants may interpret their present and their past.

23 Desmond Bell, op. cit., p. 139.

24 Peter MacNamee and Tom Lovett, Working Class Community in Northern Ireland, Belfast, Ulster People (...)

22Loyalism identifies a clearly defined Ulster Protestant community. “Ulster” itself is not so much thought of as a place, “its just meant to be the Protestant people”23. This people, however, is identified not simply by its religion but by its historical situation. Its entry into history is abrupt ; plantation constitutes Protestants as a separate community, distinct from those they live among, culturally, religiously and politically. They are settlers from their original homeland24. They are dissenters from the Catholic church. They are loyalists and unionists in a country that rejects both.

25 Rosemary Harris, Prejudice and Tolerance in Ulster : A Study of Neighbours and Strangers in a Bord (...)

23Plantation thrusts this community into a situation which demands constant struggle against stronger enemies. Loyalist narratives centre on dangers and threats from wider communities – of abandonment by the British, threat by the native Irish, and destruction by the forces of the Counter-reformation. They tell of survival and success through the community’s own endeavour and endurance. In particular the steadfastness and endeavour of the common people is emphasised, and in this way loyalism serves as a form of working class assertion25.

24Violence suffered is highlighted. From the seventeenth century to the present, Catholic attacks are seen as genocidal on the Protestant community26. Contemporary Irish nationalism and republicanism are seen to share this genocidal intent. Sir Basil Brooke spoke of Catholics as “men who were really out to cut their throats if opportunity arose”27. Sarah Nelson reports being asked on the Shankill “Will you Scots take us in when they drive us out ?”28.

25Such attacks function in the narrative to justify the unionist position – their insistence on partition, their actions in the Stormont period, their refusal to share power. Unionists cannot be expected to bargain with those who wish to destroy them. They function also to encourage unionists to endure, confident that endurance will eventually bring recompense to the just cause. They legitimate the Ulster Protestant community’s determined and violent resistance to Catholic attack and British abandonment. One of Desmond Bell’s informants explained the point of loyalist marches in these terms :

29 Desmond Bell, op. cit., p. 109.

they’re not goin’te let the Taigs take over ! Like that’s all they want te do29.

30 Sarah Nelson, op. cit., chapter 10.

26The subtext is unionists’anger and indignation at the attacks and betrayals30. Violence in self-defence is inescapable ; there is no normality while the enemies and attackers exist ; “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”. The desire to “eradicate” and “extirpate” their enemies is often expressed. A report of a speech by Rev William McCrea exemplifies all these themes :

31Irish Times, 13-2-1986.

Those who are stirring the hornet’s nest do not really appreciate the anger of the creature. The long-suffering Unionist population has been butchered, mocked, slighted and tramped down for 18 years but now they are restless and ready for a determined lead. They cry aloud – “let us have peace...” The shackles of this murderous republican conspiracy must be shaken off... Should a conflict be forced upon the people of Ulster, I am convinced we will witness a population movement as never known before in our generation31.

32 R. G. Crawford, Loyal to King Billy : A Portrait of the Ulster Protestants, Dublin, Gill and Macmi (...)

34 See Rosemary Harris, op. cit., p. 179-181 for folk memories from the 19th century ; Lynn Doyle, An (...)

27In highlighting the settler past, the loyalist narrative implicitly acknowledges the conflict of interest between settler and native. Some explicitly recognise that Protestant achievement was at the expense of the native community in whose lands they built their home, and who opposed their presence and projects32. Others claim that most natives were not disadvantaged, only the “economically unproductive warrior class” lost out33. But a recognition of native resentment exists in the common loyalist assumption that Catholics retain a desire to destroy Protestants, to clear them out of Ulster, to get them off their land34. It is an awareness of the native community at once as dispossessed and as destructive that impels loyalism to self-justification and underpins its central cultural imperative : vindication of Protestant actions in the past, of their position at present and for the future. Not just the rights, powers and property they have inherited, but the meaning and ultimately the Tightness of their forefathers’achievements are at stake.

28Time and again we find loyalists stating their concern to protect not just their lives and property, but also the meanings of their history and community. Nationalism has succeeded in defining Protestants not as the victims of violence and injustice but as its perpetrators35. Its destructiveness lies as much in its symbolic overturning of Protestants’self-definitions and cultural hegemony, as in its physical and material reversals of unionist power36. The Civil Rights Movement, for many Protestants, was an attempt

to take our position – not so much our position in the United Kingdom as our Protestant position37.

29Others speak of it as a taking of all they had and had built, or a stealing, in a way, of their birthright. The fears of genocide spill over from fears of physical destruction to fears of cultural destruction. They fear that their history will be taken from them. Their fight is one to secure the survival of meaning as well as of material life. Only thus can they secure the survival of the Protestant community constructed in the narrative. Without such defence, a Protestant community might survive, but it would not be the self-determining historic community that almost 400 years ago came to a foreign land, made it its home and defended it resolutely ever since.

30The secular loyalist narrative, however, is vulnerable to nationalist definitions. The prioritising of settler/native relations easily slides into an understanding of the native viewpoint : this viewpoint has at once to be repressed, if loyalist self-justifications are to be maintained, and half-understood, if native resentment is to be explained. In Jack Foster’s words

On some shelf of our psyche sits uneasily our acceptance of our usurpation... which we justify in terms of our own merits and the demerits of the usurped. But such justification... confirmed our repressed guilt and condemned us while preserving us38.

31There is always a danger of slippage from loyalist solidarity and cohesion to self-doubt and self-hatred, a fear that loyalists in fact have no right to their land or presence in Northern Ireland, a fear that the loyalist interpretation is itself vulnerable. In one study of Protestants in Derry, the author notes that many

feared that improved personal relations might undermine their commitment to their position39.

40Ibid., p. 38.

32It is precisely this danger, rather than a borrowing from religious ideas, that underlies the strongly intellectually repressive tendency in loyalism – the refusal even to look at the nationalist self-understanding, the fear of “contamination” by nationalist symbols, the fear even to approach the “other side” – and the tendency among many secular loyalists to lack all interest in ideas. It also, perhaps, underlies the pervasive sense of vulnerability among loyalists, the fear of being humiliated and ridiculed noted in one study40. Loyalism, in its secular form, is essentially unstable. It may try to force itself into the form of a closed ideological system, impervious to new experience, but it cannot achieve self-certainty : the opposing viewpoint is built into loyalism and constantly threatens to undermine it.

33It is at this point that secular loyalism faces a choice. Typically, religious elements reenter the narrative : they give a theological guarantee of the rightness of the settlers, the chosen people, whose settlement was itself the expression of God’s will. Religious meanings shore up the loyalist narrative against self-doubt. In contrast to secular loyalism, religious loyalism is characterised by a striking self-certainty and closedness to new evidence41. It allows a clear justification and defence of the loyalist position and the certainty of victory42. Even when secular loyalists do not themselves embrace the religious beliefs, they see the value of having leaders who do.

34Secular loyalism is, however, also open to change. The new loyalist parties – the PUP and the UDP-show this dynamic of change within loyalism43.

35The PUP and the UDP were parties formed by ex-prisoners from loyalist paramilitary backgrounds. They came to political prominence with the loyalist ceasefire of 1994. It was immediately apparent how far and how quickly they had moved from loyalist assumptions. For these parties, conflict in Northern Ireland is no longer zero-sum, rather a negotiated settlement is possible. Protestant identity is no longer in opposition to Catholic and nationalist identity, rather the spokesmen see themselves as in some respects British, in some respects Ulster, in some respects Irish. There is no longer a fear of corruption by contact with the enemy. Nor is there any reliance on religious certainty : if their arguments require to be backed by force, it is to paramilitary rather than religious force that they refer-a PUP spokesman noted that “our mandate [in negotiations] is the silence of the guns”. They have strong unionist constitutional convictions but are quite willing to contemplate change should a nationalist majority emerge in Northern Ireland. There is a strong socialist and social-democratic thrust to the parties’ policies. They are also open to reconstruction of Protestant history. In benign political circumstances, there may be no limits on the ideological development of these parties.

36There are, however, very definite socio-economic conditions of these changes. The UDP and the PUP emerged in the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, when loyalism was increasingly marginalised and demoralised. The leaders were ex-prisoners, who had already personally experienced the defeat that many loyalists fear. They skillfully used the new political opportunities given by the peace process to highlight the position and interests of secular working class loyalists.

37The parties, however, have failed to win wide public support. Their ideology demands quite radical reconstruction of Protestant self-perceptions. Yet the experience which motivates the loyalist constituency to which they appeal is precisely that of a zero-sum conflict which will persist so long as Protestants exist as a community. Loyalists sense the capacity to defend their interests slipping with each new concession to Catholics. They are unwilling to concede the very definition of their community. Too much is at stake for most of them to risk such a venture. Despite widespread admiration for the new loyalist parties, secular loyalists have continued to vote DUP.

***

38Religious ideology dominates within loyalism. But this is consistent with strong secular tendencies amongst loyalists. The religious and secular coexist because religious loyalism has a secular meaning and expresses in religious form both the political interests and the historical experience of many Protestants. Secular loyalism simply restates these social truths : Protestants’interest in control, their perception of a zero-sum conflict, and their need for a view of history that lets them identify with their community while retaining a degree of dignity. It follows to its logical conclusion its commitment to the union, willing to pay a high price in terms of civil liberties, equality, and democratic norms for the sake of community survival. But the loyalist position is essentially unstable, open to radical change, and the socio-political conditions which would allow such change have only begun to emerge. In this situation, religious certainty stabilises the loyalist perspective. To transcend religious loyalism requires not secularisation alone, but a transcendence of the situation that gives rise to the deep conflict of interests within Northern Ireland.

Notes

1 For discussions of loyalist ideology and the relations of secular and religious within it see Steve Bruce, God Save Ulster : the Religion and Politics of Paisleyism, Oxford, Clarendon, 1986, chapters 8, 9 ; Frank Wright, “Protestant ideology and politics in Ulster”, European Journal of Sociology, XIV, 1973, p. 243-247, 277-278.

39 A. Hamilton, C. McCartney, T. Anderson and A. Finn, Violence and the Communities : the Impact of Political Violence in Northern Ireland on Intra-Community, Inter-Community and Community-State Relationships, University of Ulster at Coleraine, Center for the Study of Conflict, 1990, p. 37.